I was told once that I have man’s hands…
What better reason for me to dress like a man?
Luckily for me and my manly hands, gender-blending has been steadily assimilating into popular fashion aesthetics for the past few years – brogues, boyfriend blazers, boyfriend jeans, short hair cuts… However, I can’t help but feel a little greedy. To begin with, men have a small variation of fashion styles to choose from compared to women, and yet fashion history has it that while men in skirts is a fashion taboo, women are ripping off men’s styles everyday without anyone batting an eye.
On the flip side, in most cultures historically, both genders wore skirts, probably because this just made sense. Just look at the traditional dress of all the South East Asian cultures. Pants, having been developed to make it easier to ride a horse, became uniform for the medieval man, symbolising that he goes out to war and to hunt and other such masculine things. So then the skirt inevitably became the metaphorical ball and chains tying women to menial domestic occupations, and served to perpetuate in the eyes of society the subservient status of the gender. It was in the early 1900s that feminists began to wear pants in defiance of this deeply engrained gender imbalance *deep breath*
Now we’ve somewhat come full circle. Skirts for men have made consistent appearances on the runway and on the street, possibly reflecting that in fashion, no one gives a shit anymore about societal notions of gender segregation.
Wearing: Shirt by Mink Pink; Corduroy pants by ASOS from Asos.com; Tattoo Brogues by Mimico; Belt by Country Road; Bag, thrifted.
So what do you think about gender-blending in fashion?
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